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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
What Law Firm Bus Dev Teams Can Learn from the Fortune 500
Joel Wirchin
Marketing and business development for law firms increasingly complex. As competition intensifies, RFPs and marketing output rise, and maintaining brand consistency across changing markets, regions and diverse work settings becomes a critical concern. It’s time to think big.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
How Modern Law Firms Are Navigating Digital Transformation
Ari Kaplan
A new report emphasizes the connection between legal technology and law firm success, the importance of training to ensure technology adoption, the influence of automation and document management on digital transformation, and how law firms are deploying data to create a competitive advantage.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Four Legal Ops Traps That Can Stunt Growth
Brian Corbin
For legal stakeholders seeking to take their existing legal operations programs to the next level or start new programs from scratch, there are a few all-too-easy traps that can stunt growth, cost political capital and cause headaches. Having a strategic plan, budget and critical executive buy-in is not enough to avoid these four common issues.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Law Firm Profitability and Learning from the Past
J. Mark Santiago
Future partners will be identified, developed, and elected from the associate ranks, so they truly represent the future of the firm. Reducing the number of associates from which to choose future partners is a risky undertaking.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Expense Right-Sizing In a Challenging Economy
Rob Mattern
What strategies can law firms take to rein in expenses during a challenging, down market to avoid further layoffs? Look no further than the firm’s back-office operations. This article presents a brief overview of five areas where your firm can not just “cut costs” but actually improve operations while doing so — this is expense “right-sizing.”
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Billing Rates Have Increased, But Not Enough to Beat Inflation
Andrew Maloney
Law firm billing rates have increased across all law positions in 2022, but not necessarily enough to keep pace with inflation. That’s according to news reports that point to some more challenges for law firm profits.
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Marketing The Law Firm
The Four Legal Sales Strategies
Eric Dewey
The ‘best choice’ provider pitch may not be the optimal sales strategy. It's better to adjust to where the prospect is in their buying decision process — whether that means they are looking for providers, they are studying the situation, they already have counsel, or they have decided not to address the issue.
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Marketing The Law Firm
How Will the Am Law 200 Use Their 2021 Profits?
Dan Roe
While nobody seems to think that the current inflationary period constitutes the new normal for the Am Law 200, the sustained demand has helped firms smooth out some of the challenges that will become sharper when there isn’t as much legal work to go around.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Rising Expenses and M&A Slowdown Could Sink Profit Growth This Year
Andrew Maloney
Stifling expenses and a slowdown in transactional work during the first quarter could sink profit growth for the rest of the year, according to a new analysis of legal industry performance.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Law Firm Profits Soared In 2021, Despite Increased Expenses
By Gretta Rusanow, Gloria Gomez and Scott Kesselman
Strong demand growth led to a war for talent, but it was also a major driver of the industry average double-digit revenue growth seen in 2021.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Are Lawyers Packing More Billables Into Less Time?
Andrew Maloney
Are lawyers working harder than ever? Recent figures in the legal industry show only a slight increase last year in the number of average hours billed per lawyer. Yet analysts and firm leaders say the total amount of hours worked — not just billed — is likely higher,
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Marketing The Law Firm
Sales Speak: Selling Doesn’t Cause Buying
Eric Dewey
Selling doesn’t cause buying. Buying is an internal business process and that process is fast becoming out of sync with the sales training we often push on our lawyers. Our buyers know more than we do about what is really important inside companies when they are looking to hire outside counsel. We must get better at that lest many of our practices become even more commoditized.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Rate Hikes Threatening Trusted Status with Clients
Dan Packel
After years of clients working to trim their roster of firms to a trusted group that understands the specific challenges of their businesses, rate hikes are threatening to upset these delicate relationships.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
How Should Law Firms Use Their Windfall of Profits?
Patrick Smith
After many firms experienced a highly profitable 2020 and sky-high demand levels in 2021, they found themselves with more cash than usual. While more than enough Big Law money has been lavished on associates and laterals recently, those aren’t the only ways firms are spending their riches.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Understanding Your Clients’ Changing Needs In a Post-Pandemic Legal Market
Marci Krufka Taylor
If it was challenging to get facetime with clients pre-pandemic, that challenge has only multiplied in the post-pandemic world. As firms look for creative ways to reconnect with clients, client interviews and surveys have become more important than ever for ensuring client satisfaction, loyalty and profitability.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Process Automation: Increase Competitiveness By Going Paperless
Adam Levithan and Laura Whitman
This last year has brought an ever-increasing pressure to be competitive and retain the margin that pays salaries and powers growth. One outlet to maintain and increase competitiveness is the reduction of paper processes and increasing the use of technology.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
How to Create a Law Firm Culture That Supports ‘The Hustle’
Randi Rosenblatt
Whether they practice at global firms consisting of thousands of lawyers or decide to hang a shingle and put their name on the door, lawyers chose a path requiring continuous, never-ending hustle. Not only do they need to master the practice of law, they need to master the art of driving revenue.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Despite Pandemic, Profits At Am Law 100 Firms Leapt to New Heights
Brenda Sapino Jeffreys
The past year posed new and unusual challenges for U.S. law firms, rattled by economic uncertainty, remote work, stay-home orders and social distancing. Despite the turmoil, profits at the Am Law 100 leapt to new heights.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Law Firms Need to Look At Partnership Behaviors to Manage Profitability
Hugh A. Simons
In the decade ahead, the mechanism for offsetting the effects of external market forces on profitability will shift from changing partnership composition to transforming a partnership’s behavioral norms, centering on how partners behave toward each other and help each other become the best possible version of their professional selves.
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Marketing The Law Firm
How Do Business Development Efforts In High-Performing Law Firms Differ?
Meghan Frank
As firms and their clients continue to navigate ongoing business challenges in 2021, BD and marketing professionals first need to understand how mature their efforts are in specific areas. Then, they can look at what the successful firms are doing differently, so they can position themselves to join those ranks.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Utilizing Accountability Partners to Build Business
Randi Rosenblatt
Attorneys can utilize accountability partners to fuel the advances one truly wants to make in their efforts to build books of business.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Firms Adding Financial Analysts to Calculate Profitability
Andrew Maloney
Law firms are increasingly adding new staff members and software to calculate their profitability, helping firms determine partner compensation and make other business decisions.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Late Year Collections Could Make or Break 2020 Profitability
Lizzy McLellan
Success in 2020 is likely to come down to who your clients are. If they were hit hard by the pandemic that will trickle down to their vendors, including law firms. But for others, the top line could come out nearly unscathed.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
It’s 2025: What Did We Do to Successfully Shift Law Firm Operations?
Rob Mattern
A Look Back from the Future
If we look back at 2020 five years from now, what will we point to as the key actions that brought law firms back, and which of those are still in play.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Year End Is 90 Days Away, Make Every Day Count.
J. Mark Santiago
We are now into the sixth month of the COVID-19 pandemic and law firms across the country are entering the critical last quarter of the year. Historically, law firms collect between 30% and 50% of their annual revenues in the final 90 days of the calendar year. This year will be more challenging than prior years for a number of reasons.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Law Firm Profitability Expected to Be Stable for 2020 Despite Decreased Revenue
Dan Packel
Economists are increasingly gravitating to the concept of a “K-shaped” recovery following the steep plunge of the early days of the coronavirus crisis. With a slight tweak, that “K” may well serve as a useful depiction of law firm profitability in 2020: just add a horizontal third line at the center.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Undercutting the Cost of Underperforming Attorneys Is Your Responsibility
Sharon Meit Abrahams
As a firm leader it is your fiscal responsibility to address underperforming attorneys. With COVID-19, are your underperformers flying under the radar? The cost to a firm is not only to the bottom line, but to your reputation as a leader.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
2019 Was a Record Year for the Am Law 100 But What Will 2020 Hold?
David Thomas
After a 5% increase in gross revenue and 3% growth in revenue per lawyer, the Am Law 100 were in a good place at the start of 2020. Then a global pandemic started. Now what?
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Marketing The Law Firm
Adopting COVID-19 Cuts, Law Firms Balance Image and Economics
Patrick Smith
Firms Are Applying Communications Lessons from the Great Recession As They Deliver Bad News During the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Many firms have appeared in recent weeks to be signaling compassion, embracing (relative) transparency and sharing sacrifices across lawyers and staff. That can help make even painful cuts less harmful for a firm’s internal morale and outside reputation.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
How a Law Firm’s Comp System Affects Profitability and Partner Satisfaction
Hugh A. Simons
Compensation systems are typically a strategic afterthought, seen as the means by which to allocate the spoils of a successful strategy. They’re viewed as affecting the level of grousing among partners, but not a firm’s performance. The data, however, indicates the reverse is true.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
How to Survive (and Even Thrive) During and After the COVID-19 Lockdown
Valerie Chan
The ability to adapt, be nimble and pivot as necessary is crucial to surviving and thriving in ever-changing economic climates. Communicating in the age of social distancing requires a new way of thinking and being — not just in the virtual workplace with our peers but also how we communicate and partner with our clients.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Adopting COVID-19 Cuts, Law Firms Balance Image and Economics
Patrick Smith
Firms Are Applying Communications Lessons from the Great Recession As They Deliver Bad News During the Coronavirus Pandemic.
As firms echo their response to the COVID-19 crisis, they are also showing they learned from the experiences of a decade ago, including the negative effects of delivering cuts unevenly, clumsily or with unnecessary secrecy.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Strategies to Avoid or Reduce Billing Rate Discounts
Eric Dewey
For a large portion of engagements, discounts are not necessary to win the work. In fact, discounts come at a price. Both parties assume a degree of risk when margins are thinned. This article presents several techniques that you can use to re-direct discussions away from discounts and help to minimize their financial impact.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Law Firm Revenues Rise as Demand Accelerates, Citi Reports
Gretta Rusanow
There is a lot of good news in the nine-month 2019 industry results. While we might not end the year with the strong growth levels seen in 2018, we anticipate that 2019 will be a decent year. For the first time this year, revenue growth exceeded expense growth.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Determining Who Should Serve As the Billing Partner
Joel A. Rose
Due to a law firm’s team-oriented approach to business development and client service efforts, it is not always clear who should logically and most efficiently serve as the billing partner for a client or a particular client matter. A person should only be a billing partner if he or she is or will be performing the functions outline herein.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
How to Become a Rainmaker
Arnold Keiser
Almost anyone willing to develop the qualities necessary can become a rainmaker.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
The Global 100 Are in the Midst of a Growth Spurt
Dan Packel
The World’s Largest Firms Turned In a Second Straight Year of Robust Revenue Gains Amid Near-Universal Progress
Mergers, rapid growth among Chinese law firms, and a healthy American market coalesced to turn 2018 into a spectacular year for the world’s largest law firms.
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Marketing The Law Firm
The Time to Improve Administrative Performance Is Now
J. Mark Santiago
This article focuses on what a firm can do now that will improve future firm economics regardless of what the future may hold. It identifies three areas that offer the great opportunity for improving a law firms’ economics and better positioning them for whatever the future may bring.
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Marketing The Law Firm
The Importance of Social Skills: Technology and Data Are Not Enough to Grow Your Firm’s Business
Jamie B. Field
Data is taking over our lives. And preceding that is all of the applications and technology that exists that helps us measure that information. But technology and data are not going to be the only growth drivers of a firm in the future. What’s going to become most important in the face of the technological changes that are occurring in law firms is a lawyer's "soft-skills."
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
The Time to Improve Administrative Performance Is Now
J. Mark Santiago
This article focuses on what a firm can do now that will improve future firm economics regardless of what the future may hold, identifying three areas that offer the great opportunity for improving a law firms’ economics and better positioning them for whatever the future may bring.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
“Don’t Do Stupid”
J. Mark Santiago
6 Common Law Firm Accounting Practices That Need to Be Re-evaluated
There are a number of tried and true practices in law firms that need more thinking. Not because law firm managers are stupid; it’s just that some practices need to be periodically re-evaluated and adjusted to reflect the changing times.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Lawyers: Being Paid Shouldn’t Be Like Pulling Teeth!
Peter A. Johnson
What Lawyers Can Learn From Dentists
Nobody enjoys visiting the dentist, but everybody knows you still must pay him or her on the day of service. Attorneys, however, have historically let the client lead the payment dance. Lawyers do the work and hope/expect to be paid without waiting too long or discounting the invoice too steeply. What can we do differently?
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Orion Prebill Survey Shows Law Firms Are Troubled by Inefficient, Paper-Heavy Prebilling Processes
Kevin Harris
Prebilling, the process of generating invoice drafts and circulating them for annotation/adjustment, is one of the most important monthly tasks a law firm conducts. Since prebilling involves bringing money into the firm, the more efficient the process becomes, the better off the law firm is financially.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Key Tax and Financial Considerations for New Law Partners
John Fitzgerald and Christopher Imperiale
Being asked to join the partnership of a firm is a measure of success as a legal professional. With that achievement comes tax and financial responsibilities that, surprisingly, few attorneys are fully prepared to deal with. These responsibilities include the unexpected individual federal and state and local tax filing and payments.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Case Study: California Law Firm Dowling Aaron Is Transforming and Modernizing Its Prebilling Process with Orion ePrebill Manager
Gregory N. Miskulin, Jamie Carstens and Lindsay Powell
Orion’s ePrebill Manager allows corrections to prebills to be tracked and applied in real time, with a one-click acceptance and approval process. Further, by distributing prebills electronically, attorneys can see the edits made by others, the overall net effect of write-downs, and how these affect the realization of both the working timekeepers and the client overall, in real time.
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Marketing The Law Firm
The Confounding Paradox of Marketing Investment for Struggling Law Firms
Bill Josten
“You have to spend money to make money.” Or, so holds the well-worn cliché. For those firms struggling to find meaningful growth in today’s market, where do they find the funds they need to spend in order to spur growth?
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Law Firm Profitability: The Art and Science
Timothy B. Corcoran and Marcie Borgal Shunk
The Manner in Which Law Firm Leaders Measure Profitability Has the Potential to Have a Profound Impact on Behavior and Motivation, Particularly As More Firms Integrate This Metric Into Their Compensation Systems
The manner in which law firm leaders measure profitability has the potential to have a profound impact on behavior and motivation.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Media & Communication: 3 Ways to Drive Higher ROI from Press Releases
Nicholas Gaffney
In an age where law firms can quickly disseminate news to target audiences via multiple social media platforms as well as their own websites, is it finally time to put the press release out to pasture? The press release is a valuable PR tool that deserves to live on. Executed correctly, the benefits outweigh the cost.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Law Firms Are More Profitable Than Ever. How are They Doing It?
Nicholas Bruch
Given the Obstacles Law Firms Are Facing, Profitability Shouldn’t Be Increasing
Rising competition from alternative service providers and the ever-forward march of technology adoption should be having a similar, negative, effect on profitability. This raises an obvious question — how are law firms doing it?
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Prospering in the ‘New Normal’
J. Mark Santiago
Raising Costs and Declining Demand are Sapping Profits
The “New Normal” of today is one in which raising operating costs, associate salary increases, and reduced realization rates coupled with AFAs and demands from corporate counsel for reduced rates are sapping firm profits and there is no relief on the horizon. Law firm leaders, seeing current conditions, should be asking if there is a better way.
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